Susan Oleksiw

During the spring much of my focus is on reading stories for the next Crime Spell Books anthology. This is our fifth year (and the third anthology/literary journal I've started and spent years working on), and we're considering offering more than our usual twenty or so stories—a form of celebration for our readers.
 
But I'm also writing a story, and have been using a key to each individual character. It begins with a name. Characters have to match their names in some ineffable manner. Use the wrong name, and the character falls flat, and is flat. But get the name right, and the character breathes and fills out. Once a character is named and starts appearing on the page, the writer can't and shouldn't change it. I tried that once, and the rest of the book never felt right, so I had to go back to the beginning and correct my errors. This is a beginning writer's error, and I was indeed a newbie, struggling with my first novel. (It won. I was defeated, but I learned a lot.)
 
Sometimes I use a dictionary of names, and for this story I've made a list that are keys to the characters. Names give me ideas, but also delimit what the person can do. For one figure in particular I chose the name Miriam because I did want her to be disappointed, bitter, which is the definition of Miriam. But when I came to describe her conduct in a key scene I found out exactly what she was bitter about, and it wasn't at all what I expected. It also wasn't in my plan for the story. The question here is, What do I do about it? And the answer is, Nothing.
 
When a character takes off and emerges from my pen (or typing fingers), I've learned to give in and not try to correct it. I did try that once and got nowhere. I operate under the illusion that I control my typing, my thoughts and plans for my fiction. But sometimes I don't. I can't cross my unconscious. If it has decided this or that character will behave in a certain way, I have to go along with it, or the writing stops. If I want to go on writing, I have to open a new blank page and pick another topic.
 
Lots of people will think this is an exaggeration, an overly dramatic expression of how hard it is to write, and on and on and on. But when you are fully in tune with your creative unconscious, a part that arrives unbidden, first you are grateful for it, and second you are wary to break the spell. It's like ignoring your conscience. You can do it, but it won't go well.
 
Miriam brought a new thread into my story, so my job now is to trace it along and find out where it leads, what it means and what to do with it. This can be the best part of writing, as exciting for the writer as it is for the reader—the experience of discovery, of not knowing what's going to happen when I turn the page, of the delicious pleasure of surprise.
 
That's where I am now. You can read the final result in the upcoming anthology, Snakeberry: Best New England Crime Stories 2025, available in November.